Now is Good

This summer, Will turns forty, which means, much to my surprise when I stop to think about it, that I'll be 38. I'm not really sure how that happened. I've spent so long being the young mom, hearing "oh, you're just a baby" at gatherings with other parents that I almost didn't realize that I have reached middle age.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset about it. I've never feared the next big birthday. I didn't worry about turnign 30 (gosh, that was a long time ago) and I don't feel like I will in two years when I turn forty. I don't mourn my youth, probably because I never was very good at being the 20-something wild child that some of my friends had perfected. I didn't like bars and parties and bare midriffs. I never went clubbing. Instead I stayed home and painted rooms or installed new faucets or worked on some craft. Or read. So I pretty much did then what I'm doing now. Although I will say that I could fit a whole lot more remodeling in back then. All that youthful energy that most people spent on partying instead went to pulling all-nighters with a grout trowel re-tiling bathrooms.

So I don't wish I was young again, but I'm surprised to find myself older. Some friends had dinner with us last weekend and brought their two toddlers, and I watched them walk around and around the yard after one or try to continue having a conversation while changing the diaper of the other and it seemed like so long ago that I was doing that. It WAS so long ago. My kids were happily entertaining themselves, one at a park four blocks away, playing basketball with his friends, and I could sit and sip a glass of wine and not worry about someone tripping on uneven concrete and dissolving into tears. I mean, that can still happen, but it's a whole different kettle of fish with a 12 year old than a 2 year old. There's no Thomas the Tank Engine band-aids involved, for example.  And again, I'm not sure when that happened. When we stopped having little kids and started having big kids. It happened so fast. What is it they say? The days are long but the years are short? I used to hate it when people said things like that. Things like "It goes so fast!" or "Enjoy it while you can!" because it made me feel like there was something I didn't know, some way that I didn't really understand parenting. But now I realize those people were like me now. Slightly stunned at the fact that that part of their life had long since passed and that it was only in those moments, seeing what you're not doing anymore, that you realize how long it's been.

I loved having little kids. But I love having big kids too. In fact, I think I love it more. Some crazy part of my younger self wanted to have all my kids before I was thirty, because I had this idea that being younger with older kids would be better for us. And thank goodness I did because that crazy part of myself was right. Maybe not right for other people. But for us, it was a good choice, even if a slightly insane one at the time. And I suppose having kids whenever would have been great for us too. I guess what I'm saying is, now is good. Right now it's good to be almost 40. It's good to have kids who can empty the dishwasher (with only a little poking and prodding) and go to the bathroom without help and watch movies with that don't involve creepy trains with faces. It's good to be getting older, even if I'm discovering that, like my dad, I can predict the weather by my aches and pains and I can't drink coffee after lunch time without spending a wakeful night staring up at the ceiling and counting the hours before I have to be up for work. Now is good. Flying by too fast, just as it always has and always will, but good. I'll enjoy it while I can and hope that the next "now" will be just a nice.

                                                                                           -Gillian

in my head

I'm sure I'm not alone in this, it must be something most, if not all parents face. At least I hope I'm not the only one. I often find that I have an image in my head on how things will play out. Not big things. I'm bot sitting here imagining my children graduating from Harvard (not that I don't think they could go to Harvard) or our family winning the lottery. Little things. Everyday things. A peaceful dinner where we all use good manners and laugh and joke and smile and where Evelyn actually eats without gagging over every bite of green. A drive to Burlington that doesn't include whines about when will we get there or I'm hungry or I'm bored. I'm easy to please, really, I just want peace and happiness.

But the reality is that most of the time things do not turn out like I imagine them in my head. Sure, sometimes they are better, but often things just seem to go pear shaped. Nothing terrible or cataclysmic, just not very smoothly. Let's take the first day of school. That would be today.

We were ready. I mean, we had the backpacks packed, new clothes laid out, snacks in containers, hair washed, nails clipped, gas in the car, alarm clock set. It should have been easy. It wasn't. Briton woke up so far on the wrong side of the bed that he should have fallen off. Everyone needed to use the bathroom at the same time causing a bottleneck that led to breakfast being late. And then someone (hint, it was the person who woke up grumpy) didn't want pancakes with sprinkles. He wanted a ham sandwich. And the fact that we didn't have ham caused yet another whirlwind of grumps.

Eventually, a little bit on the late side but still with plenty of time to get to school, we piled into the car and headed out, only to find the road closed (who closes a main road into town on the first day of school?) So the long way it was, pulling in two minutes late, where they had to leap out of the car without much of a goodbye. No walking them to their classroom, no hugs, just a "go! go! go!" The only consolation was a blown kiss from Evie and a comment from Briton as we pulled into the parking lot that he would try to have a "less complainy day tomorrow." (thank goodness for that).

No real drama. But just not...right. You know? What can be done? We could get up earlier, go to bed earlier, put the kids to bed in their clothes for the next day? Something would, inevitably, still go awry. That's just the way of the world,  I think sometimes I set myself up for failure by expecting moments like that to be normal when, really, life with kids is never normal. Life period is never normal. So, deep breath. Let it go. Expect the chaos, right?

And as it says in the greatest book of all time, "tomorrow is a new day, with no mistakes in it."

But I think I'll leave early tomorrow. Just in case the gods of road construction are still against me.

reading on the go

I have a slightly embarrassing admission to make to you. One of my all time favorite book characters is not Emma or Elizabeth Bennet or someone from a serious and seriously depressing Oprah Book Club book. It's not even a character from an adult book. It's Henry Huggins. To be fair, he's probably my second favorite. My favorite favorite is and always will be Anne Shirley. But Henry is close behind her.

I read, and loved, all of the Ramona books growing up. How could I not? Ramona lived, like me, in the Northwest. Her family, like mine, didn't have a lot of money but did have a lot of fun. She didn't like to brush her hair, neither did I. She had a fixation over one of her classmates perfect ringlets, which she longed to tug with a great big boooiing and I had a similar fixation with the perfect blond braids of one of the two Emilys in my grade. It wasn't until I was a teacher that I read the Henry books and it wasn't until I was the mother of a boy that I really got them.

Henry is a boy after my own heart. In part because Henry is very much like the boy who has my heart. Briton is exactly the type of boy who would try to bring a dog home in a box on the bus or end up with hundreds of guppies in mason jars on the floor of his room. I totally identify with all the times his mother says "oh Henry!" in reaction to his antics. We've read and re-read the Henry books. We have them on tape and CD and MP3. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the house we lived in when he was born was one block over from the real Klickitat Street, or maybe it's just that Beverly Cleary is a genius at understanding real kids. But they have held steady for a long time as some of our favorite reads.

At almost 11, Briton has, in a way, outgrown the books. They are far too easy for him to read, really. He wouldn't want to be caught carrying one around in his backpack when everyone else is reading the Warriors series or The Hunger Games. But he's very willing to read them aloud. Because that doesn't quite count as the same thing as reading them.

The one thing I dislike about living here is that there is an enormous amount of driving. Enough driving that, for the first time since we started dating, Will and I have separate cars. Things are just far apart and not at all walkable. So between to-ing and fro-ing to school and the grocery store, which is in the next town over, and the bank and soccer and basketball we spend a lot of time in the car these days. We've tried listening to books on tape, but they don't seem to hold their attention the way they do at night. Instead, Briton has been reading to us in the car. Reading Henry Huggins. It's just the right combination of still-fun for him and young enough for Evie. And I doubt I'll ever grow tired of Henry. We're about halfway through Henry Huggins, with Henry and the Paper Route queued up as our next read-in-the-car book. And it's sparked a whole new renewal of love for Beverly Cleary in general. All her books are stacked together in the book nook, in order (roughly) because Evelyn would like to read them all this summer please and thank you. We're reading Ramona the Brave currently. And just as an FYI, I think Ramona may fall as number three on my best book character list. Clearly I'm hopelessly immature when it comes to book love.

sugaring

As soon as we bought our house, I told Will I wanted to try making maple syrup. It falls right in line with my desire for bees and chickens and a huge garden and (at some point) sheep or pigs or goats. I remember being fascinated by the descriptions of maple sugaring in Little House in the Big Woods. Of course, I also wanted to try my hand at making a pig bladder balloon. And I have a strange fondness for John Seymour's Guide to Self Sufficiency and all those BBC/PBS live-like-pioneers reality shows. I'm odd like that.

But that was all in theory. In theory we will get tap the trees and buy buckets and build an evaporator. In theory we will sit outside all day on Saturday and boil our sap into syrup. In theory we'll be sending out bottles of our own maple syrup next year for Christmas (with, in theory, our own honey). In reality I have no idea what I'm doing. But the temperatures for the coming week look promising and although I have no evaporator, I have been promised the building of one next weekend. So with a little faith that the evaporator will appear in time, four used buckets and taps and a vague idea on how to identify and tap a sugar maple, we have jumped feet first into sugaring.

Honestly I have no idea if it will work, or even if the trees I chose are the right ones. We could get no sap, we could be overflowing tomorrow morning (and I have not gone to pick up that food grade barrel for holding the sap yet. Eek! So if better not!) but either way, I'm excited. We are all excited. After six months of refusing to buy fake syrup (we live in Vermont! I will not buy it even if they like it) the kids have finally become maple syrup converts and they are just as eager as I am to have our own jars full. And also to try making sugar snow. And maple candy. And to spend hours poking at a fire.

Some day our life seems pretty ordinary. Wake up, take the kids to school, go to work, do the laundry, make dinner, go to bed. Same old, same old. But then on other days it seems quite extraordinary. To think about clearing woods and bees arriving in the mail and sitting around a fire in the snow making maple syrup. To go our and chop wood for the fire and hike through the snow or the leafy paths in summer or to stand in the kitchen cranking out jars of jewel colored jams to fill the pantry shelves. Is it terrible to be so content with life? I hope not.

socks for we two

Cozy, chunky socks. A pair for him and a pair for me. Finally done! Mine are, you may remember a save from the first pair I made for him. The yarn, although warm and delicious looking, is not at all stretchy, which is a problem when your feet are huge. Even all that ribbing and cabling did not give enough for his long foot to make the turn at the heel. So they were unravelled until they were the right length for me. The toe is a bit abrupt, but they aren't for wearing under shoes anyway. They are house socks through and through. And much needed now that it's getting colder.

Will's pair were found in the lost knitting bin with one sock 2/3 of the way finished, a second ball of yarn stuck through the needles and no pattern to be found. I'm sure I had a photo copy of it at some point, but it's long gone. I finished the first sock using my pair as a guide and then used that sock as a guide for the second sock. The yarn is Cascade 220 and is squishy a stretchy and warm. So now he has house socks as well. Although he declares they are good under shoes as well. And can he have another pair please? I'm thinking these look like fun. But first, oh I have some bunny slippers that need to be knit for a little girl who can not find her slippers anywhere. Too cold for bare toes!

It's knitting weather out there, indeed. I seem to trail yarn these days, always a project clicking along. That also means I usually have kitties trailing after me who love to chase the yarn and bat at the needles, and then I have a girl trailing after the kitties. Which is not a bad thing at all.  *See, as soon as I hit publish I looked up to find Miss Finn attacking the bunny slipper yarn! It's just too much for them to resist!

My favorite project, a guilty little treat, is the beginnings of a BeeKeepers Quilt, which may end up being a Bee Keepers Bench Cover for the pew, or maybe it will be a quilt. All knit up from odds and ends of sock yarn. So I suppose it depends on how many odds and ends I can find around here. We'll see. I'm not in a hurry and it's the perfect project to keep in my bag at all times. A few stitches here, a row or two there, another hexi-puff done and tossed in the basket.

a view, a memory

One of my favorite memories of high school is of the annual barn dance and cider pressing at the farm of a family we knew. In reality I probably only went to it twice, maybe even once, but somehow it's become an integral moment from my childhood, something that defined what it was like to live where I lived, when I lived there. The long tables in the barn spread with a hodge podge of potluck dishes, everyone eyeing them up, trying to decide which dishes would be best. The women sitting around an old picnic table, quartering apples, then cutting them into smaller chunks, filling the buckets that would be taken by the boys to the big press, bolted to a cement pad in front of the barn. The dads would take turns with the crank, occasionally some of the bigger kids would get in there and try their hand as well. And by the time we were ready to eat, there were jugs and jugs of cider. More than you could possibly drink in one night, although we tried. We drank it cold during dinner and then hot later in the evening, sitting around a big bonfire while people danced in the barn, climbed on the climbing wall, hid in the loft. Babies slept in peoples laps, people sang, stars twinkled. It's a good memory. A perfect moment.

This week there was a note in the school bulletin about a harvest dinner. All welcome. Bring a dish to share and your own plates and utensils. It sounded like fun. Something to fill our Sunday evening.We could stop by for an hour and then come home. In the end, though, we stayed for hours.

East of our little village there is an old schoolhouse that's now a food coop and store. We've been there several times. It's on the way-ish to the lake and has one of the best beer selections in town. Plus it's just a fun place. Behind the schoolhouse is a community garden and the school garden that provides our school with most of it's vegetables (ours is not exactly your average elementary school in many ways, the amazing school lunches being just one of them). And behind the garden, the hills roll away to farmland and mountains beyond. A beautiful view.

People showed up with bags of apples for the press. Crab apples and windfalls and strange little warty green apples. The kids washed them and cranked the chopper and then took turns at the wheel of the press. And then we sat at long tables covered with a mish-mash of tablecloths and ate squash and apple dominated dishes with our fresh cider until it was way past time to take the kids home to bed.

It almost didn't seem real- the view, the setting, the cider, the milling people, the twinkle lights and candles. It looked like something that would be staged for a tourist brochure or a movie. But it was. And it was perfect. One of those nights that is sure to stick in our minds. I hope it does. I hope that twenty years from now our kids will look back and say, "Remember that night? That dinner? Remember running around in the garden? Watching the bees file into their hives? Pressing apples until our fingers were sticky? How good the hot cider was when the sun went down and it got cold? Remember that?" Actually, I hope that twenty years from now we are still going to that Harvest Dinner. But even if we aren't, we have this one. A good memory. A perfect moment.

new routines

 

We are finding a new rhythm to our day, the dog and I. For the first time ever, it's just us here. The house is quiet, outside I can hear the creek tumbling along down the hill, even with all the windows closed. Of course, that's when the music is off, which it almost never is. I'm used to noise, after all.

For ten years I've been at home with someone. Someone small. First just Briton, then both, then just Evie. Last year it was just Briton again and, while I've loved it, loved being a stay at home mom, loved the chaos and the mess and the pounding feet as they race through the house, I was ready for this too. A chance to work on writing. All day. To do something for me.

So I sit down at the desk after the kids have climbed on the bus and Will has driven away in the car. I have my list of things that need to get done before the bus comes by again, I work, I drink tea (lots of tea, because otherwise it would be lots of coffee and then I'm too jittery to get anything done.) I'm learning to stay put, to not be distracted by dishes or laundry or projects that need doing. Or at least to fit them into my time without letting them take over.

Somewhere around lunch, the dog starts staring at me. Nudging closer until her chin is on my lap. Before that she generally disappears upstairs for her post-good-night's-sleep nap. And after she'll have a before-the-kids-come-home snooze. But at lunchtime she wants to run.

We walk, along the road or down the hill. Yesterday we found a mushroom that looked like a brain clinging to the side of a tree. When I remember - which isn't very often yet, I'm still getting used to this routine - I bring a bag and collect sticks and bark for the kindling box. I walk, she runs, I pick my way over the rocks, she swims. And then we climb the hill again to our afternoons. Me to work, her to sleep. (Rough life, being our dog) Until it's time for the bus, for running feet and homework and snacks and mom time once again.

awe

I can't quite get over the fact of Vermont. It sounds silly, but even a month in, I'm still in a little amazed every day that we get to live here. I feel spoiled. And very lucky.

Driving has never been my favorite thing, but having my daily route take me along a river and into a village to drop the kids at camp and then up to the top of the mountain for a workout before heading home through the woods, all in the space of a few short miles, makes it a pretty pleasant thing to do. This morning the moutain was wrapped in low hanging clouds and I had to force myself to keep my eyes on the road instead of the view.

I'm sure there will be days when the smallness of the place grates or the months of snow get old. And I'm still learning to slow down, to realize that sometimes, when a storm knocks out the power for the night and the internet for the next day, well, you just curl up with a book and chill. Because eventually, everything will be working again. Although- note to self-spinning by the light of ones ereader does not smooth yarn make. And it's nice to have the people at the post office know your name, and to see everyone stop patiently on the highway while a heard of ducks ambles s-l-o-w-l-y across, and to have folks already notice that your boy-o is an excellent big brother. Ever watchful. So I think those little niggles, well, they'll be well worth it.

But I've been feeling a little self-concious about my Vermont-love, not wanting to seem like such a newbie with my enthusiem (or worse, a tourist, you remember how much I hate to play the tourist). It's hard not to start every conversation with "Holy cow is it beautiful!" Becuause surely, surely, folks here are used to living in the middle of all this outrageous georgousness.  So when, yesterday during camp drop off, I heard one mother say to another "Wow, is it beautiful. We live in Paridise, you know? We really do."

We really do.

I felt immensely glad that I'm not the only dweeb that cant seem to get past that.

to the lake

Somehow, in the space of a week, I have gone from the kind of person who always has the necessities of a day in the city in her bag (bandaids, waterbottle, google map app, subway coloring book) to the kind of person who is always ready to go fishing. The poles live in the back of our car, the bait is in the fridge, but if we are already out, we know all the places where a little tub of worms can be picked up in a pinch. There are towels back there too, along with a bottle of water for drinking and another for catching tadpoles or minnows, and knitting, naturally, in my bag.

And so, in between meetings with mortgage brokers and real estate agents, looking at houses, visiting schools and new jobs, we pop out to the lake to run around, to wade in the shallows, to knit on the banks and to fish.

Briton, who has a hard time focusing on much for more than a few minutes, can fish for hours and hours  (and hours) and Evelyn, who will fish off and on, will putter around in the grass picking flowers or stand nose to the water watching the pond life for as long as her brother will fish.

 

Despite the fact that we are still busy getting settled, it is a slow kind of business, to mirror the slow kind of pace here. And that means long afternoons that stretch into the evenings doing nothing but watching the bobber bob, waiting for the beaver to troll across the pond and slap his tail at the canoers and chase tadpoles from one shady spot to another.

book lump

After I finish a book, I almost always spend a few hours mourning the fact that it's done. I rush to the end, impatient to find out what has happened, and then when I get there I wish that I'd slowed down, savored it a bit more. It doesn't keep me from slowing down the next time, of course, but I wish it nevertheless. Sometimes it lasts a few minutes, sometimes hours, and rarely, it goes on for days. I call it my book lump. When no book seems to satisfy, and all I can do is grumble about having finished what before I was so eager to get through.
The longer books lumps don't happen often, and thank goodness, because they always leave me a little grumpy. And there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to what kind of book puts me out of reading commission for a more extended period. The Help did it. Emily of New Moon and the two sequels did it as well. But so did the Hunger Games. And now Major Pettigrew has me lumping. It's not that I don't have enough books to choose from. I have books. Many, many books. Books I really want to read. Just not right now. Because they aren't the right book.

I think the problem is that I try to find similar books when I'm done. I get on Amazon and see what pops up in the "Others who bought this looked at" lists and I try one of those. Inevitably that fails and I mope around for a few days until I can get over it and move onto something new. I finished Major Pettigrew on Saturday morning and spent the rest of a long, chilly, perfect for staying in and reading kind of weekend trying out, and discarding, three different books from the library and four more that I have waiting on my shelves. All failed. At least I had my knitting to keep me busy.

Do you get the book lumps? Read anything fabulous lately that might snap me out of it? I finally latched onto Bossypants late last night and I think it might just hold. It's about as opposite as you can get from Major Pettigrew which might just be the ticket. We shall see I suppose.

in search of color

I've come to an interesting realization this week. With the sun shining with that bright yellow, summer-is-on-the-way kind of hue and the plants starting to bud out everywhere, I've been feeling unexpectedly happy. I had been attributing this happiness to a number of things- having more time to write, the end of the year in sight, creeping closer by the day, new yarn (because yarn always makes me happy). And I'm sure that all of those things are contributing factors, but there's something more to it than that.
This winter has been hard for me. Probably the hardest I've been through. I've had days where I really didn't want to get out of bed, days that verged on depression, days that probably were depression. That's very unlike me. I'm sort of the consummate glass is half full girl. There are always good things about life. And again, Will was busy and the apartment felt small and life in the city in the winter takes some getting used to, but there was something more that was getting me down.

Having spent about half of my life in places that are famously rainy and gray, I'm used to dull winters with no sun. I've never suffered, as many Oregonians do, from Seasonal Affective Disorder. I actually like the low contrast light of a rainy day. But what I'm not used to, I realized, is the colorlessness that winter in New York brings.
You'd think there would be plenty of color here and in a way, there is. Shop windows, umbrellas, high heeled rainboots that cost as much as two weeks groceries. But looking at the big picture, at the landscape of the city in winter, there is an utter lack of color. Gray sidewalks, gray streets, gray bare trees, black coats, black roads, black shoes, gray buildings, gray sky, gray light. The difference between the dull, all consuming gray of New York and the soft pleasant gray winters of Oregon is the green.

Even in the middle of winter Oregon, and Ireland for that matter, is green. Blindingly green. The trees and the bushes and the grass is green. The moss that builds up on the sides of trunks and buildings and fences from all the damp is a violent, bright green. Green is everywhere. Any beyond green, the houses and doors are brightly colored, almost as a little f-you to the long rainy months.
I need color. I buy flowers and plants and pin Evelyn's ever-brighter drawings all over the house. I crave color. There's not enough of it out there yet. Pops of yellow, little bits of purple. bunches of orange and red and pink tulips outside the markets. But it helps. Every day it gets a little bit greener, a little bit more colorful, and I find myself smiling at nothing in particular much more of the time.

Does winter get you down? How do you cope when it does? It's interesting to be realizing it from the other side, wondering what would have made things easier (Green walls?)

book lover

I realize that I am, perhaps, a little over excited about my reading girl. But I can't help it. I have struggled with the fact that Briton doesn't instinctively love reading. It's something I just don't understand. How could anyone not love to read, need to read, depend on reading to get them sanely through the day? It shouldn't bother me so much. Will also doesn't love to read, it shouldn't be such a shock that his son, who is so like him in so so many ways, would rather wrestle with the dog or build a Lego fortress or play a video game than sit quietly and read. I've told myself this a lot over the years. That it's ok for him not to feel the same way that I do about books. That I can encourage and reward, but never force him to love it. And he reads, don't me wrong. These days he is reading more and more and with an increasing interest, but still, given the choice, he will generally not pick a book. So walking into a room to see this, makes me a little giddy.
Last night, just as I was starting dinner, Evie ran into the kitchen. "I finished Dick and Jane! I read ONE HUNDRED PAGES! All by MYSELF! Can we go get another?" And even though I was in the middle of cooking and we have a billion books sitting on the shelf waiting for her to read them, we did go get another. Right at that moment. Because I remember that feeling. Turning the last page in a book and knowing that you, you, read it. All by yourself. I can still vividly remember finishing my first chapter book, after being a slow reader all through first grade and halfway through second, suddenly I was flying. I closed the last page of a Ramona book and flew into my parents room, past my bedtime. Past their bedtime. Because I had done it. I'd finished it all on my own.

The fact that she loves reading now isn't really a guarantee that she will continue in my book loving footsteps. And the fact that my energetic boy would rather play than read doesn't mean he wont. I still have high hopes on that front. I've seen glimpses of it in him already and I continue to heap books on him any chance I get. But I love, oh how I love, hearing that little girl beg for another. Watching her read while she waits for her pancakes in the morning or want to put pajamas on at two in the afternoon curl up on the couch, me with my book, her with her own. "Let's read mom."

Yes please. Let's read.

loving

Lately I've had a list building in my head of things that I want to share but which aren't really big enough to write a whole post about. I mean, beyond, "These little basil ice cubes from Trader Joes are so cool!" what else can I say? Its basil. Chopped up and frozen in a tiny little ice cube tray. Awesome for cooking but beyond that... meh.

So today I'm bringing you a list of things I've been loving on lately. It's not very cohesive so you'll have to pardon the randomness of it, but where else will you find a conversation that includes squeezable sweetened condensed milk, magic wands and a marker review all in one place?

Let's start off with those markers, shall we?

P'kolino Art Set - Evelyn got a set of P'kolino markers, crayons and colored pencils for Christmas from her grandmother and they are hands down the best kid art supplies we've had. Because they are a step above our normal Crayola/RoseArt supplies, we've kept them together in their container on our table and make sure they always get put away at the end of a coloring session, of which there have been many, many, many of late. Last week the brown marker got dropped on the floor and the tip broke completely off. (Imagine a sad Evie face. "How will I draw treeeeeees now mom??") I emailed the company asking if I could buy just a brown marker and they promptly volunteered to just send me one. So not only are their art supplies great, they are pretty darn nice as well. (Miss Evie is very pleased to know that she will soon be able to draw forests again, she's been holding back all week)

Nussbaum and Wu - I think my favorite thing about New York is that I can walk to a coffee shop. I've almost always lived where I could walk to a coffee shop, but generally it's been a bit of a trek instead of right at the end of my block. This place is busy and steamy from bagel making and crazy loud but they have great coffee (Stumptown! Oregon Coffee), lots of seats where I can sit and write for an hour or two after dropping Evie off at school and they know my order by heart. It's my Cheers.
Book Villages - This is a new obsession for the kids, building intricate villages that span from their room to the living room made out of picture books and inhabited by any toy smaller than 6 inches. Yesterday Briton very seriously pointed to one book, surrounded by Calico Critters and said "This is the zoo, Luke Skywalker owns it, and that over there is the Science Museum, Hagrid owns that one." I think maybe he's got those two characters turned around somehow, Hagrid seems more of the zookeeper type. But whatever. And speaking of books...

Readers - I've got two readers in the house now. Evelyn has made a huge leap in reading and I'm tickled to find here plopped down here or there with a pile of books, reading to her dolls. While I'm not a big fan of the fat that everyone in her class knows exactly what level everyone else is in reading, I do love that she is proud of her progress. So Briton is plowing through the fifth Harry Potter Book and Evelyn is reading Fun with Dick and Jane (Because spot looks like Nigella and she never gets tired of that) and I am surrounded by readers. Heaven.

Source: notmartha.org via Gillian on Pinterest

Those Basil Cubes - Since Trader Joes has become my regular grocery store, I've discovered some items that I'd never noticed during my fly by shops in the past. Teeny little cubes of frozen basil in a sealable ice cube tray being one of them. I'm also loving the squeezable sweetened condensed milk. I love to put it in Chai but I hate having an open can in the fridge, it's just a disaster waiting to happen. Let's see, there's also mini peanut butter cups that are chocolate chip sized and are delicious in cookies (dangerously so) Cookie spread which looks like peanut butter but tastes like gingerbread cookies and frozen, precooked rice blends. I know that makes me sound lazy, but I like being able to break off just enough rice for my lunch and have it ready to eat in a minute or two.
Harry Potter Mania - As I mentioned on Friday, it's hit both kids in a big way and our day is not complete without a good hour or two of wizard duels. Last week I made them each a wand roughly following this tutorial. Briton's is greenish black and Evie's is pale and sparkly and they turned out surprisingly realistic. I'll try to write up how I went about making them since I veered from the original method to make them a bit stronger since they are travelling with us everywhere these days.


This comic strip - Because I am right there. Will's sweater is blocking on the bed this mornign and I'm forcing myself not to cast on a new project until I have finished seaming the sleeves and have steeked (ahhh!) the neck for the zipper. But it's really really hard, escpecially since I have a skein of beautiful purple silk yarn from Posh Yarn (also a new love) sitting in my work basket right now, calling to me.
And that sweater was a lot of work, because it was a lot of sweater. I deserve to start something new, right? Right?
Blueberry Bread Pudding for Breakfast - Does that really need an explination? I didn't think so. Yum

Two new blogs - Posy Gets Cozy - I'm waiting with baited breath for her new cross stitch pattern to come out because even though I dont' cross stitch I love it, so I'm going to give it a try. And Book Snob - which has led me to several new-to-me good reads. I'm currently working my way through Call the Midwife and Encounters, both reccommended by her.

Maisie Dobbs - Since I'm in Downton Abby withdrawel, I'm also reading the first Maisie Dobbs book which is set just after World War I. I haven't had a good mystery series to crank through in a while and this one almost makes up for the fact that I have to wait a year for the next series of Downton. I realize that that is three books at once, so I probably shouldn't tell you that I'm also in the middle of Henrietta's War (very funny) and The Essay's of Elia (not sure about that one yet). I have multiple book reading personalities. I can't help it.

Little Green Shoots - There isn't much opportunity to see the early signs of spring popping up in our neighborhood, but I did spy the first daffodil of the year in the corner of the Peace Garden yesterday as we dashed home through the rain.

Alright, that's probably enough for now, although I have more percolating up there in my head. How about you? What are you loving these days?